3 p.m. in Chapel Hill
3 p.m. in Chapel Hill is unrelenting. The humidity sinks into my bones as soon as I cross the air-conditioned threshold into the late June afternoon. Making my way down the drive, the thrum of voices fades, and I smile, knowing my friends will laugh upon my return.
“Only you would walk outside at this hour,” they’ll say, swarming me in their Northeastern and Midwestern accents. And I’ll grin and nod, their southern counterpart. They were amazed and perplexed by Chapel Hill, the South.
In New York, my new home miles away, I hear people say, “Hell is a humid heat,” when June slinks onto the sidewalks, the subways.
“And so is heaven,” I think. My memories of childhood summers in North Carolina hold this same heat: feverish barefooted sprints through backyards, only pausing to crush chilled watermelon slices against my teeth.
Turning away from the town’s streets daubed with bikers and cars, I am subsumed by trees. The air becomes so viscous that I’m almost held captive, bound in place as I try to follow the road’s cracked yellow median in a steady line. Just beyond, porch-wrapped houses taunt the asphalt bank, my gumption. Cicadas clap and sing and whoop and holler in delight at my efforts; their high-pitched buzz the only thing permeating the fug. I used to think the sun made that noise, lighting up the scene in a victory cry.
And yet, the dampness is not unwelcome; it’s a familiar embrace, cushioning each step forward as I make my way around the street bend. Sweat trails down the backs of my knees, my neck. I relinquish. I pull my hair into a loose ponytail and watch the light shimmy above the asphalt.
I take my shoes off. It feels right, worrying a pebble against the pad of my foot. A ladybug lands on my shirt hem. “A good luck charm,” I think in my mother’s genial lilt. He comes along for the pilgrimage, bouncing to the slap slap slap of my footfalls.
The tree canopy urges me forward. Drunk with kudzu, the forest stretches out over the road. It flirts with telephone wires and cheekily pushes past guardrails and locals’ fences like an impish child clinging to their mother’s leg. Blips of shade offer respite to my unpracticed, adult feet. I’ve been made soft by years away. I look up, beholden to the leaves' soporific sway. My eyes move between their individual shapes and their pooled green. Buttery sunbeams perforate here and there, licking up the leaves’ edges and bearing down onto my shoulders. I think about lying down and letting the heat drench me, lapping up whatever the trees found so delicious.
When friends in New York ask what I miss most about home, I always say this lushness. Like oil paint brush strokes, the canopy moves heavy, glutted. It chides the breeze. “I don’t want to dance,” I can almost hear the trees say. “I just want to sit and watch.” The breeze carries on, pushing and prodding. It’s summer, after all. The party has only begun.
About the Author
Cecilia (Cecil) Beard is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York, but her heart belongs to North Carolina. Her work has appeared in Catapult.
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha.
